Abstract

PEREZ, Juan Alejandro; FRANCO, Jaime Martin  and  BENITEZ BENITEZ, Ricardo. Waste biomass from the Cannabis industry, an alternative for obtaining products of high added value. Rev. colomb. biotecnol [online]. 2023, vol.25, n.1, pp.92-103.  Epub Dec 12, 2023. ISSN 0123-3475.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rev.colomb.biote.v25n1.102648.

As we as a society, give more importance to achieving a circular economy, it becomes important to find renewable sources suitable for the production of biofuels and biochemicals. In the last years, several different sources of lignocellulosic biomass have been studied for these purposes. One of these biomass sources is hemp (Cannabis sativa L), being part of an industry that has grown through giant steps in the last decades, in Colombia, since its legalization. Specifically, the industry of medicinal hemp is responsible for the generation of huge amounts of residues in the form of the plant stalks, considered a low value subproduct. This review compiles the information of several studies about the exploitation of the polysaccharide portion of hemp biomass through chemical and biochemical transformations, obtaining value-added products. It was found that most of these studies focus on the production of bioetanol or biogas; reports of other molecules such as succinic acid, furfural, polyhydroxyalkanoates and bisabolene were also found. Industrial viability of these processes remains a question, since pretreatment, hydrolysis and final conversion steps are usually expensive. It necessary that future studies focus on optimizing conditions of these processes as well as making them green, ensuring that they can be scaled.

Keywords : Cannabis sativa; lignocellulose; biorefinery; enzymatic hydrolysis; bioproducts.

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